King of Tomb Raiders

Chapter 14

Facing the Tang Clan of Sichuan, one must be extremely cautious every second; it is indeed an extremely thorny problem...

While I was thinking and washing, it took me almost an hour before I finally came out of the bathroom completely clean. I changed into the embroidered robe that the servant had prepared for me, and slowly walked to the dining room in black satin slippers.

The restaurant is decorated in a traditional Egyptian style, with colorful pure wool tapestries hanging everywhere.

All the tableware was made of pure silver and polished to a shine. The four-meter-long dining table was covered with a snow-white embroidered tablecloth, and silver plates were filled with whole roasted lambs, roasted chickens, roasted beef legs, roasted geese, and roasted turkeys.

The air is filled with the scent of mint leaves and rosemary, making one's appetite soar.

Each seat was filled with a glass of fine, pink Egyptian red wine, made using a secret method from wild grapes grown in the desert with extremely low yields. It was not only renowned but also so expensive that even Scotch whisky producers would be ashamed.

The first thing I saw was the proud and noble Tang Xin. Her fox fur coat was so white it was dazzling, and the faint smile on her face, along with the two rows of fine white teeth that appeared and disappeared between her red lips, made her seem as noble as a princess or queen, and everyone had to look up to her to express their admiration.

Beside her sat Tiger, his face full of tenderness, while five steps behind him stood Song Jiu, ramrod straight, his face perpetually stern, his fingers always resting on his sword hilt. These three seemed inseparable, always appearing in my field of vision simultaneously.

Suren stood up, nodded and smiled at me. Beside her, Scalpel, sitting in the host's seat, stared blankly at his wine glass with a slightly melancholy expression.

I sat down next to Su Lun, and the faint scent of lavender emanating from her robe sleeves invigorated me. Compared to Tang Xin, she was unassuming, calm, and capable—an ideal work partner.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses to welcome our distinguished guests, Miss Tang Xin and Mr. Song from the Tang Clan of Sichuan, as well as the renowned martial arts master Tiger. There is an old Chinese saying, 'Isn't it a pleasure to have friends coming from afar?' Please drink to your heart's content, and don't leave until you're completely drunk." The Scalpel's toast was tactful and appropriate, but Song Jiu stood obediently the whole time, without even blinking.

"Mr. Song, would you please take a seat? Everyone here today is my friend, please sit down..."

Tang Xin subtly interrupted Scalpel with a delicate flick of her pinky finger: "He is merely my servant, Mr. Scalpel. If you wish him to sit, you would be better off inviting all the servants and maids in the villa to sit here. Would that be more convenient?"

Tiger diligently peeled a grape and placed it on Tang Xin's plate, laughing heartily, "Right, right, servants can sit at the table, so shouldn't our master stand aside and serve us?" His mind was entirely on Tang Xin, and he didn't even glance at the scalpel.

Tang Xin turned her face, tilted her chin up, and pointed at Song Jiu: "Speak up."

Song Jiu opened his mouth fluently, as if reciting a poem: "Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, Du, Hu, the six great retainers, generation after generation, will be servants of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, never to betray them, otherwise they are willing to fall into the den of ten thousand snakes and be buried in the snake pit."

Indeed, among the major surnames in the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan region—Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, Du, and Hu—the Tang family is the most prestigious. The other six surnames, for reasons unknown, have been willingly serving as servants of the Tang family for generations, remaining loyal and never betraying them.

The martial arts world is inherently a strange, intricate, and chaotic place. Many sects have bizarre rules that are baffling just to hear about.

"Haha, interesting, interesting..." The scalpel chuckled, its color changing slightly, but it still maintained the demeanor and status of its owner, inviting everyone to eat.

Throughout the meal, my eyes remained fixed on the tiger, and I finally became certain that the Tang Clan had definitely tampered with him. Even if it wasn't the "Emperor's Gu," it was certainly some kind of mind-altering drug, turning him into an idiot who could eat, sleep, talk, and obey orders, following their every command.

As the meal was drawing to a close, a servant hurried in, carrying a black cordless telephone on a silver tray.

The scalpel answered the phone, listened for a few seconds, then suddenly changed color, a surge of wild joy flashing across his face. He exclaimed repeatedly, "Good, good, good!" He was overjoyed.

Tang Xin, Tiger, and Song Jiu remained unfazed, not even glancing at the scalpel, as if the three of them were the only ones in the vast restaurant. Tang Xin, on the other hand, was the center of attention, commanding the complete submission of Tiger and Song Jiu. I noticed a detail: on Tang Xin's wrists, there was a tattoo on each wrist. A snake's head on her left wrist, a snake's tail on her right, both dark green, detailed and eerie.

The tattoo extended all the way into her sleeve, and a thought flashed through my mind: "Will this tattoo run through her entire body?" I'm not against tattoos, but a petite girl with a long, dark green snake tattooed on her body, once exposed, certainly wouldn't be a pleasant sight, would it?

Furthermore, she wore no jewelry on her ears, neck, wrists, or fingers, and her hair was naturally flowing without any hair clips or hair ties. Upon closer inspection, her fox fur coat was also unprocessed, purely made of natural fox pelt and hand-stitched.

In short, nothing on her was made by modern machines, including her shoes, which were hand-sewn and made of some kind of extremely tough animal hide.

My mind was racing, and I couldn't afford to be distracted. I couldn't help but glance at her a few more times, which made Song Jiu tap her sword hilt with her fingers several times and stare fiercely at my face.

As we were leaving after the meal, Scalpel tugged at my sleeve, signaling me to follow him.

We walked one after the other to the end of the first-floor corridor and stopped in front of a thick, round stone pillar that took two people to hug. He turned around, unable to contain his excitement: "Elder Sahan has woken up and wants to see me, but he also wants to see you." He rubbed his hands excitedly, paced back and forth, and slammed his left fist hard on the stone pillar, making a "thump" sound.

"See me? He knows my name?" I was a little surprised.

“Yes, he knows. And he said that you will become an invincible warrior who can subdue the illusion demon. Feng, Elder Sahan never jokes. If he says you are, then you definitely are.”

A "ding" sounded from inside the stone pillar as the elevator doors opened, followed by the stone walls parting to reveal a narrow two-person elevator. I already knew the interior of Scalpel Villa was incredibly intricate and complex, but this was my first time experiencing it firsthand. I followed him into the elevator, and immediately the doors closed swiftly. My feet felt light, and the elevator began its rapid descent.

The Second Part: Underground Horror

— Chapter 3 — Elder Sahan —

The scalpel's expression was incredibly complex, shifting between excitement and dejection, revealing the rapid changes in his mood. I kept trying to think of the best possible outcome—that he was making a final effort to find his brother, even if there was only a one in ten thousand or one in a hundred million chance.

He has already relinquished the excavation rights to the Turkham Pyramid, and the relics of Atlantis will eventually be left for Tano and his group to choose from.

What if we consider the worst-case scenario? What exactly is the scalpel's intention?

The elevator continued to descend for a full six minutes, and I estimated that this passage would continue to descend deep into the mountainside.

The elevator is a product of Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan. It is compact and sophisticated. During the rapid descent, it is smooth and silent, and there is no feeling of weightlessness or discomfort.

"Elder Sahan is accompanied by a female disciple," the scalpel said abruptly.

Recalling the video I saw of Elder Sahan getting off the vehicle, there was indeed a girl with her face veiled in gray following behind, thin and bony. I didn't pay much attention to the girl, and I didn't entirely trust Elder Sahan either. I had seen interviews with Elder Sahan in many magazines and newspapers, where reporters lavished praise on him, describing him in vivid detail as a magical figure like a pharaoh, capable of things from afar, swallowing knives, breathing fire, and other such supernatural powers, seemingly omnipotent.

In my opinion, the more cunning a con artist is, the more impressive their boasts tend to be.

I nodded silently, offering no comment.

Suren will naturally relay all the information from inside the tunnel to the scalpel; I need not worry about it further. At this moment, others know everything about me; I know nothing about theirs. This situation is like a traveler lost in a thick fog, unable to find his way, utterly frustrated.

Of course, I feel a little guilty for causing Su Lun to get hurt innocently.

“There’s a lot of information. We can discuss it slowly after we meet Elder Sahan.” The scalpel patted my shoulder hard, staring intently into my eyes, and added very solemnly, “Feng, listen carefully to what Elder Sahan has to say, calm your mind, and I guarantee you will gain profound insights from his words, definitely.”

I silently lowered my head, avoiding his gaze. Just then, the elevator gave a slight jolt; we had reached the ground floor.

The door opened to reveal a long, empty corridor with stainless steel walls. We stepped out, and the elevator doors closed automatically. The surroundings were so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The milky-white ceiling lights, also concealed within stainless steel, emitted a soft, pale glow that cast a faint, almost imperceptible blue light on the scalpel's apron.

The scalpel strode forward; the corridor must have been equipped with the most advanced sound-absorbing devices, because his leather shoes made absolutely no sound as they stepped on the steel plate.

The corridor was seventy steps long. At the end, it turned left and led into a spacious hall. The walls were all supported by stainless steel. Inside the hall, four rows of large computer cabinets were neatly arranged, and thousands of red and green indicator lights were flashing rapidly.

There was still no sound, but there were people in the hall. A dozen young people in white work clothes were recording something in an orderly manner in front of the server rack.

"Sen—" the scalpel beeped, and a pale-faced young man put down his folder and strode over. He wore thick glasses and had long, slender fingers, like those of a top pianist.

"The situation is alright... vital functions are operating normally, and there are signs of accelerated improvement. As for brain cells and heart and lungs, there is a strong transformation taking place, and at the moment, it is impossible to tell whether it is good or bad..." The young man's American English was fluent and concise, and his blond hair and blue eyes also proved that he came from the United States.

"Then, could it be a return trip—"

"A final burst of energy before death? What the Chinese call a final burst of energy before death? We can't be sure! For now, all we can do is inject him with an excessive amount of cardiac stimulants to keep his heart beating rapidly. At the same time, we're also giving him a dose of 24 kinds of super-strong nutritional hormones, hoping that some of them will have a good effect on him. That's all."

“Mori, this person is very important to us, please—” Scalpel was very amiable towards the young man, but Mori was ruthless and cold, slashing down heavily with his right hand to interrupt him: “We know, we will do what we are supposed to do.” Then, he turned and stepped back, pressing a green button on a nearby table.

A two-meter square hole silently appeared in the stainless steel wall to our right. That section of the wall had appeared flawless before, but the hole suddenly appeared. Extrapolating from this, I guessed that there were probably countless such holes hidden along both sides of the corridor we had just walked through.

Before entering the cave, I looked around the hall again. The hall was thirty meters square, and roughly speaking, its perimeter was over one hundred meters. It was large enough to accommodate as many as forty or fifty cave entrances of this type. In other words, the underground chamber of the scalpel contained an untold secret.

I let out a long breath and followed the scalpel into the opening. At first, there was a stainless steel wall, and then I realized we were walking in a stone corridor, with milky white light stretching endlessly forward.

"Sen is the CEO of this research institute. He's young, incredibly talented, and the successor to the Microsoft empire personally chosen by Bill Gates. But now, he belongs to me, to my operating system..." The scalpel spoke with a hint of pride about the young man.

I shrugged. I didn't want to hear about other people's business secrets.

The air around me was filled with a chilling, eerie atmosphere. The sound of dripping water drifted from somewhere, and suddenly someone clapped their hand softly to my side, making a dull "plop" sound, like striking a deflated drum. Startled, I braced myself, first using my arms to protect my heart and groin.

Years of experience in the underworld have instilled in me a habit of constant vigilance. To avoid being caught off guard and losing one's life, caution is paramount.

The sound came from a slightly recessed stone niche, a dark corner where the light couldn't reach. The moss on the stone walls was extremely thick, gleaming with a glossy, damp green light. A pair of lifeless gray eyes rested against the moss, staring blankly at me. At first glance, these eyes were extremely strange, large and deep-set, lacking the usual black pupils and whites, just a lifeless expanse of gray.

I felt my breathing quicken under the intense gaze of those enormous eyes, as if I were being stared at by a mummy with decaying, dried flesh in an ancient tomb thousands of meters underground, sending chills down my spine. Then, I realized that the owner of those enormous eyes was hanging upside down on the stone wall, head down, seemingly practicing some kind of mysterious skill.

"Pfft," the man clapped his hands again, and then from the depths of the corridor, someone returned the slap with a dry "pfft."

Her large eyes blinked once, then slowly closed. My eyes adjusted to the darkness in the shortest amount of time, and I could see clearly that the person was a girl, thin as paper, with her feet hooked upside down in a horizontal crack at the top of the niche, hanging there entirely by the strength of her toes.

Undoubtedly, she was the girl following Elder Sahan in the video, that is, the old man's female disciple.

Her gray clothes clung loosely to her body, like a giant bat resting during the day, exuding an eerie aura.

Twenty steps further on, layers upon layers of red symbols appeared on the stone walls on both sides. Those crooked hieroglyphs, probably painted with red pigment, were extremely bizarre, resembling fish, birds, stars, and beasts, all sorts of strange shapes. Then, the bitter smell of red pigment filled the air, making me wrinkle my nose again and again.

Further on, there were no lights, only boundless darkness. It was unimaginable that Elder Sahan would hide so deep in this underground cave, as if he were hiding from some enemy. My mind has always been very sharp; in the past, when martial arts masters hid from their enemies, they would often dig an extremely deep underground cave and set up many traps to defend themselves.

“Elder Sahan, it is I, it is us,” the scalpel whispered, its voice humble and gentle.

I reached out and touched the red symbols on the nearby stone wall, but my mind kept replaying the strange image—neither horse nor cow—on the ceiling of the underground tunnel. Egyptian hieroglyphs are profound and complex, with numerous branches; no one can decipher all of them. Therefore, the wall carvings and books that have survived through history are essentially "divine writings," meaningless to modern human society.

Beneath my fingers lay a symbol resembling a coiled snake, somewhat like the illegible script of Mongolian script from northern China. The closest symbols were one like a shovel head digging in the soil, and the other like some kind of excavating machine with many drill bits. To me, these cryptic characters were utterly useless, like outdated newspaper articles, utterly pointless except for being disposed of as trash.

A light suddenly came on in the darkness, momentarily blinding me. When I opened my eyes again, I realized that I was in front of a huge circular stone chamber. It was five meters high and at least twenty meters in diameter. It was hard to believe that such a well-proportioned stone chamber could exist in the pitch-black underground. I had to admire the immense effort that Scalpel had put into building this underground research institute.

The walls were entirely a deep, iron-gray, like a somber night sky. The red symbols scattered all around, on the ceiling, and on the floor, like red fireworks bursting in the night sky, were everywhere, surging and fervently filling the eye. Being there felt like being in a strange, red ocean.

In the center of the stone chamber, a globe with a diameter of two meters sat on a black wooden frame. Globes are one of the most common geographical tools found all over the world; the only difference is the languages written on them, while the proportions of the graphics and lines are exactly the same regardless of their size.

The globe was so enormous that the old man standing next to it appeared very small.

"Elder Sahan, how are you feeling?" The scalpel's voice was full of enthusiasm as he strode into the stone chamber and walked toward Sahan.

I hesitated for a moment, then stepped inside, suddenly feeling uneasy. I've hated this ubiquitous bright red color since I was a child, and I've consulted physiologists many times because of it, fearing that I might have some kind of strange illness.

Sahan held the scalpel in his hand, but turned his gaze to me. His eyes shone with a dazzling light, a vibrant energy that seemed to emanate from him like two streams of heat. He was draped in a gray blanket, which, of course, was covered with red symbols. His white hair was extremely long, reaching his waist, while his white mustache and chin drooped down to his waist, smooth and serene.

I tried to avoid his gaze, took a few more steps forward, and stood in front of a four-meter square sand table.

A globe and a sand table, one a product of modern technology, the other an ancient tool used by people to deploy troops in battle. Both are professional tools in geography, yet one is from the present and the other from the past, and they are completely unrelated.

The Second Underground Horror

— Chapter 4 - The Illusion Demon's Assault —

"Wind, what did you see?" Elder Sahan asked, his voice deep and resonant, echoing in the stone chamber and seemingly releasing the full, surging power within him, causing the air to vibrate.

The sand table depicted a continuous stretch of mountains and rivers, with a dozen or so pyramids arranged in a staggered pattern at its very center. Given these structures, the sand table undoubtedly represented the land of Egypt. I quickly identified the Nile River, the lifeblood of the Egyptians, winding its way across the center of the sand table.

“Wind, I know the doubts in your heart. Come, let’s unravel them together, let’s unravel the secrets of the Illusion Demon.” He released the scalpel, raised his arms, tilted his head back, and whispered a strange incantation. Immediately, the brightness in the stone chamber increased by at least 30%, and even the iron-blue stone walls seemed to emit a faint glow on their own.

In that instant, Elder Sahan exuded a mysterious and powerful aura, like some giant stone statues standing in the desert, making people hold their breath and look up in awe.

Besides the red symbols, the ceiling was dotted with many glittering silver dots. With my extensive astronomical knowledge, I quickly determined that the distribution of stars above the sand table was exactly the same as what the Egyptians had observed when they looked at the night sky, and the distances between the stars were clearly proportional, without the slightest difference.

Elder Sahan gently flicked the globe, and the enormous sphere began to rotate slowly, its surface flashing alternately with images of yellow land and blue ocean.

The scalpel silently watched his movements, stepping aside and blinking incessantly.

"My doubts? Elder, are you aware of my doubts?"

He didn't answer, but slowly exhaled, clasped his hands together, and walked towards me with a smile.

The lights went out again, and in the darkness, the starlight on the ceiling shone even more clearly, while silver light flickered everywhere on the globe and in the sand table.

“Wind, I know your brother. Believe me! Believe everything I say; it means a great deal to your life.” He had come to my side and stretched out his hands to me: “Come, give me your hands and place them in my palms.”

To my horror, I discovered that his fair palms were completely smooth and clean, without a single line.

According to ancient Chinese palmistry, people without palm lines must have been cursed by gods and Buddhas in their past lives and will not have a good end in this life. The saying goes, "Heavenly secrets cannot be revealed," and such people are those who make reckless statements and expose heavenly secrets. Therefore, many fortune tellers, sorcerers, and those who practice witchcraft and worship gods are born with disabilities such as being blind, deaf, lame, or paralyzed.

"Come on, come on...trust me..." His voice had a strange hypnotic effect. My hand involuntarily rose and rested flat in his palm.

“Look…look at my…my eyes…” His voice suddenly became incredibly distant and hollow, and a slow warmth spread through my palm. I stared into his eyes, those dark and bright pupils like crystal-clear black mirrors, reflecting my slightly bewildered face.